In the cutthroat world of commercial talk radio, the conventional wisdom is that ultra-conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh are necessary to pay the bills and putting liberal hosts on is seen as a risk. Longtime Bay Area radio talk show host Peter B. Collins would beg to differ. Collins hosts the recently launched "All American Talk Radio," a show that would make the average right-wing talk radio listener cringe.

"Hello friends, I'm Peter B. Collins, doing my part to regain control of the formerly liberal-dominated media. I think that was back in the '60s. We're checking," Collins began a segment of the show recently from studios in North Beach.

Collins, who lives in Marin County and has an office in San Rafael, describes his politics as "left of the far right, but I don't consider myself to be all left, all the time like KPFA."

Unlike Limbaugh's show, where callers are heavily screened to make sure they're ready to fawn on cue over a host who says he's working with "talent on loan from God," Collins welcomes callers with a differing opinion. "I take on that whole idea. I don't consider myself a godlike figure. I look for callers to offer stimulating conversation, not to just tell me how great I am," he said.

While working as a talk show host at KNBR in 1991, Collins interviewed Limbaugh and asked him about his lack of opposition callers. He told him that "callers are there to make me look good. That is all callers are for."

According to Collins, the reason an extreme point of view works on talk radio is that the medium's primary ratings system, known as the Arbitrons, is essentially a memory test: listeners keep diaries of the stations they were tuned to.

"People who are notorious, larger than life, those kinds of shows are easier to remember," Collins said. "If you're a nice guy you tend to get lower reported listening from Arbitron diary-keepers."

On the air, Collins takes President Bush to task for his speech to the United Nations asking for assistance in rebuilding Iraq.

"A little bit of apology would have gone a long, long way for this president to attempt to rebuild some relationship with an entity that he called irrelevant just a few short months ago," said Collins. Using sound bites from the address to underscore his point, Collins played one in which the president asserted that across the Middle East people are safer now.

"This is such a line of crap that it's amazing that he got it out without his trademark smirk crawling across his lips," Collins said. "Come on, who is safer? The Israelis are not safer. The Palestinians are not safer. The Iraqis are not safer. The Afghanis have returned to the pre-Taliban state where the warlords and the opium growers are controlling most of that country and he claims that things are better?"

Collins' rap is not the kind of stuff you're going to hear on, for example, KSFO 560 AM, his last stop as a regular talk host in the mid-'90s. Collins worked at KSFO, the nation's first all-conservative talk station, before the station's right-wing facelift. A billboard campaign back then even endorsed his show as "a little to the left," playing on his politics and the station's dial position. The show was not picked up when KSFO's new owners, Disney, who also own KGO, took over in 1994.

Collins has also worked as a talk host at KNBR and KGO and co-hosted a top-rated morning show on KRQR-FM (known then as "the Rocker") in the 1980s where he was forced to spin tunes but refused to play Quiet Riot. KRQR is now Alice. He got his start in talk radio at age 19 during the Watergate era where he became known for his coverage of the scandal. Since leaving KSFO Collins has produced other radio shows such as "Childhood Matters" on 98.1 KISS-FM and works as a political media consultant.

Collins firmly believes there is an audience for a more left-of-center point of view in talk radio today. "There are a lot of people who are thinking critically about what's going on. They don't buy the Republican line as presented by Fox News and most talk radio shows," he said.

Not only is Collins' show different in tone, it's also delivered in a new way. It's heard across the country from 4 to 6 p.m. on the Sirius satellite radio network, but to get the show in your car or at home requires a special receiver. Like cable or satellite television, subscribers pay a monthly fee, $12.95. Sirius, one of two satellite radio networks along with XM, has more than 100 channels devoted to original music, talk and other programs.

"All American Talk Radio" is heard over Sirius channel 145 on what the company refers to as its "left," or alternative, channel. Sirius has 100,000 subscribers and expects that number to grow to 300,000 by the end of the year.

"All American Talk Radio" is produced by Icicle, a San Francisco radio network that provides its shows for free over the Internet. The show has been on the air since May and can also be heard on AM stations in Eureka (Humboldt County) and in Santa Fe, N.M.

Collins would like to have 50 stations within a year, but isn't sure what Bay Area station might have the guts to sign on.

That doesn't surprise Bernie Ward, the Bay Area's most visible talk radio liberal, heard from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. on KGO. One of only a handful of regularly scheduled liberal talkers in the country, Ward hosted a network syndicated gab fest on the weekends in the late '90s until his show was canceled for taking viewpoints not in keeping with the management of the stations he was on.

"I used to say you can be purple and, if you get the ratings, you're going to be successful. That showed me that I was wrong," Ward said.

However, Ward is a firm believer that one of the biggest obstacles liberals face as hosts is that many of them are not first and foremost entertainers.

"The problem with a lot of liberal talk show hosts is they work very hard to get both sides on, to be nice and they're perceived as being weak or wishy- washy or milquetoast," Ward said. "In many cases it's not as entertaining, whereas I give as good as I get. I'm aggressive. I'm unapologetic. I'm essentially the left version of all of the crazy right. That's never been a trait of liberal talk radio."

As for Collins' future, Ward said his greatest asset is that he is a professional talk show host. However, he cautions that Collins "is sometimes too nice, but I don't think he's going to be that way anymore."

The "nice" charge is not new to Collins. "I don't really mind that rap because I think there are plenty of a-s on radio already and I think the pendulum is going to swing."